Only Mike, standing in the doorway, was as speechless as Zeke. His eyes had popped three sizes bigger than normal. This couldn’t be happening. He wasn’t seeing or hearing right. And when his folks got back, oh, brother
.
Greg continued, “But you’re not an FBI agent. You’re an impersonator. I knew the first time I saw you that you were a phony.” He added maliciously, “And that’s a prison sentence. You’ll get twenty years for this.”
He turned on Patti, “How could you? How could you?”
“How could you?” she asked.
He hurried down the hallway, pursued by Patti, Ingrid, and Mike. He was saying, “First your cat, and then Blitzy’s at death’s door because of you, and now this. And that routine you gave me this afternoon, I took it hook, line, and sinker.” He mimicked her, ” ‘Now, Greg, don’t get excited. Don’t be so suspicious
. Surely you don’t think I had a man in my bedroom
I can’t understand you, Greg, how you could believe that old busybody.’ “
He banged the door so hard the last Mohican almost leaped off the wall. Patti clenched her jaw in anger against the tears. Ingrid said, “You liked him, didn’t you, sis?” And Mike came up and squeezed her hand. “I’ll have a talk with him next time I mow the grass.”
In the background Zeke stood shaking his head, a fighter who had just gotten to his feet after the count of ten. Patti turned on him and flared in anger, “Did you have to step on his tail?”
“Yes,” Mike put in, “what kind of an FBI agent are you?”
Zeke said quietly, “I’m sorry, terribly sorry, but I’m sure Mr. Balter will understand when this is all over and I ex plain everything to him. You won’t, of course, you just mustn’t tell him now, because it you do it would wreck everything. You have to realize that so much depends on you, that the FBI is counting on you to continue to work with us no matter what comes up.”
He repeated, “I’m sure Mr. Balter will understand.”
“I doubt it,” Mike said. “I wouldn’t, if I had seen with my own eyes “
“He will,” Ingrid said with conviction, “because he’s a living doll. If I were a couple years older I’d throw myself at him.”
“You do now,” Mike said.
Zeke withdrew as gracefully as the circumstances would allow. He felt unexplainably guilty, as if what had happened was his fault. Yet, in backtracking, he didn’t believe he could have acted otherwise. He had taken every possible precaution. His guilt stemmed, he recognized finally, from the fact that he had permitted himself to become emotionally involved with the Randalls. He was hurt deeply because Patti was hurt, and Ingrid, too. He discovered he liked them immensely, more than he realized. It took a crisis to awaken a man to his feelings.
He busied himself with the radio. “All units, stand by. Informant expected to begin operation at scheduled hour.”
D.C., who had been tending his wounded member, quit to stare at him. Zeke stared right back, muttering, “I get into gun battles for you, fight off police dogs, and keep you from getting run over and what do you do? Scream bloody murder the first time some little thing happens.”
22
The cuckoo was preparing to strike six when Patti went to the bedroom for a change of clothes. She guessed she should have called or knocked. She was always surprising Zeke. This time he had his shoes off, and began scrounging around for them. “They’re here someplace,” he said, casting a suspicious glance toward D.C.
“Are you a kicker offer, too?” she asked. It was surprising how much they had in common.
D.C. sat on the chest top and displayed unusual interest in what was transpiring. He had his moods. He might be bored and blasé note 13 one day, and the next, the scholar who was eager to learn all he could about his fellow man. Now his bright, full eyes followed first the one, then the other.
As she went to the clothes closet, she said, “I’m sorry I blew up.”
“I don’t blame you.” He was still searching for his shoes. “I would’ve, too.” He looked up from the floor, sending her a smile that warmed her all over. “I should’ve kept it from happening but I haven’t had much practice hiding in girls’ bedrooms. They don’t teach practical things like that in the Bureau. Oh, here they are.”
He was as elated as if he had trapped a bear. He found them where he had placed them, on an end ‘table.
Patti said, “Ingrid talked with Mr. Balter. He promised her he’d keep quiet.”
“How’d she manage that?”
Patti left the closet with a red Italian knit. “She wouldn’t tell me but I can guess. She probably turned on the tears. If this gets out, she says, it will hurt her so for everyone to know her sister is a tramp, and it doesn’t happen very often, and there’s hope for her if she marries the right man. I can just hear her telling him what a sweet, dear person he is, and I can see him puffing up like a toad and darnit, where’re those earrings?”
Her fingers rummaged through a little green jewelry case on top of the chest alongside D.C. who dug in a paw to help. “No, thanks,” he said, removing the paw. “I remember putting them right here yesterday. They’re always running off and hiding.”
Zeke put on his coat. ‘Ive got a pair of cuff links I’m going to get out a wanted bulletin on if they don’t show up soon.”
He turned, toward D.C. and sneezed. “What about him? Is he going out tonight?”
Patti rubbed his ears, and he purred and stretched. “How about it, D.C?”
He meowed softly, and Patti translated, “He says sure, why not? Except he’s stricken Greg’s place from his route after what happened last night.”
The radio came alive, and Zeke stepped into the closet and began talking. She watched him covertly. Such a long, tall man with the grace of a cat in his walk and movements. He would be nice to have around, she thought, easygoing when a man should be, and firm when the occasion called for it. He would be gentle and thoughtful with the woman who was his wife, even if she might never know him too well. He would always conceal his thoughts behind those soft, blue eyes, a loner of the desert country. Not that he would ever have reason to hide anything, but only because he had lived like that from childhood, a boy spurring his mustang into the canyons or up on some mesa, and lying under a greasewood bush and talking to himself and dreaming his dreams.
Now Greg, he would want to share his life with his family. He would talk out his thoughts and expect others to do the same. He possessed such a terrific zest for living. He hungered for excitement, and fed on it, whether behind a 250-horsepower motor, or with a beautiful, unbroken woman, or fighting a court case, or storming across the street with a bedraggled begonia. And that temper. A woman could help so much, a wife who understood and was patient, who could reason with him, whose love would be such that he would do anything for her. He had lived too long alone, and indulged too often his feelings and whims.
She smiled inwardly. Ever since she first became interested in boys, she had projected herself into the future with this one and that one, imagining what it would be like to be his wife. And here she was doing it again, and at her age.
As Zeke put down the microphone, she asked, “Can I get you coffee, anything?”
She discovered she was standing close to him, so close he could have taken her into his arms, and suddenly she wanted that. She could see the same want reflected in his eyes, as no doubt he could in hers. Then the reflection clouded as a thought stole in, reminding him of a reason why he should not. He turned away with seeming effort, and a chill brushed the warmth from her. She broke the brief, telltale silence. “If there’s anything you want, let me know,” How many times in her life, she wondered, would such prosaic little sentences, spoken in a routine voice, cover up emotions that she must hide, because a woman dared not expose them to a man?